Beyond Music #1 : Beauty (2 of 2)
… I stood on the surface of Titan.
It was only for a few moments but I was there. I was there. I think it was gifted to me as a thank you for all the sacrifices I have made in my life, all the painful things that I have had to endure in the name of love; and what a sight it was to behold, a sight of such breath-taking majesty it would rip the air from your lungs.
Titan is one of Saturn’s moons and is rare in that it has an atmosphere. Moons are normally too small in size to hold onto gases because the gravitational pull is too weak, but Titan, the second largest moon in the Solar System and larger than the planet Mercury, is shrouded in a thick blanket of nitrogen-hydrocarbon vapour; a vapour that rains down on the surface to form lakes of liquid methane. Of all the planetary bodies in the Solar System, Titan is the most earth-like, but the temperature is so cold that you would freeze as solid as stone the very moment you set foot there.
It was night-time on Titan but day-time on Saturn, which rose up low, lighting up as it did, Titan’s sky of brilliant turquoise. Saturn hung suspended before me, a pendulum of whitened gold, gently pulsating through a thick rolling mist of jaded green; her rings piercing the sky, rendered with vertical precision against the horizon; a glowing needle of light penetrating high into the heavens. All I could do was stand speechless, my mouth hanging open, transfixed at the scene before me. For the few short moments that I stood alone on this strange world, beguiled by its beauty, I felt I belonged there. It stirred something deep within me, satisfied in me a longing I so desperately needed. So untouched a desolation did I tread, for my soul to be touched so intensely by the sublime magic of this rare and haunting landscape that I gazed upon; with beauty of a kind so exquisite as to be life affirming in its rendering. And so rejuvenated did I feel by the sight before me, as to be reduced so helplessly to tears in recognition of its beauty. And as I paused to reflect on this barren world, this featureless terrain of ice and mist that stretched off in every direction, I thought; how lucky am I to be standing here; how lucky am I to see with my own eyes such sights of irresistible wonder that nature creates and then tucks away in corners of the universe, out of sight, in places otherwise so hostile. How lucky a man am I!
And from that moment, every woman that I would ever hold against me, ever reveal myself to in the name of love, for the rest of my sweet life, would feel surging through me the awesome power of Titan on a Saturn’s ring-lit night.
Post time: Jun-18-2017